Search This Blog

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Repealing Obamacare

I'm seeing a lot of conservative pleas for people to elect Republicans so that Mitt Romney will have enough Congressman willing to work with him in repealing Obamacare. There is something to that.

However, the last thing Republicans need with a perpetually antagonistic media is to "force" the repeal of Obamacare the way Obamacare was rammed down all our throats against popular consent and without a single Republican vote in the first place. At least in my opinion - I've not seen much call for this elsewhere on the right.

Now, Obamacare certainly isn't about to gain in popularity because the of the ensuing $2500 average increases in private insurance premiums as necessary to cover the procedures mandated by Obamacare, the Obamacare taxes hitting middle Americans on up beginning January 1, the loss of employee benefits because of the costs to employers, and the hospital system that is already groaning under the payout changes to Medicare as directed under Obamacare. Meaning layoffs of medical professionals - including doctors. Not what anyone needs right now, in a country that has long needed more doctors than it has. And yet some hospitals prepare to close their doors forever- flat broke from serving the neediest Medicare patients with less reimbursement, and some doctors are retiring early to avoid this monstrosity of a healthcare system. I even know of many foresightful doctors switching careers to get out of fields that will be the hardest hit by Obamacare regulations.

Nor is Obamacare likely to be treasured by Democrats in Congress who want to keep their seats in districts with large opposition to Obamacare - they'll vote for its repeal.

That's what we need. Bipartisan support. Enough support that the liberal media can't honestly accuse Republicans of forcing anything on anyone. Enough support that the people who believe the media blindly won't be taken in by their lies about Republicans and health care because the media can't lie and maintain any remaining credibility. Not that that's stopped them before - painting Romney as something he's not and yet they still think they can get away with it.

Mitt Romney, if nothing else, know how to get what he wants out of people ideologically opposed to him, as he did in Massachusetts. That's not to say he got everything he wanted, but he got a lot of what he wanted in coordination with his legislature. He's a leader. As Ann Coulter says this week:

Lifelong politicians haven't the first idea what an efficient, operating system would even look like. If only we had a presidential candidate who had spent his life working in the private sector ...

The way to fix health care is to take as much as possible away from the government and give it to the private sector. It is a universal law of nature that everything run by the government gets worse and more expensive over time -- the postal service, airport security and Amtrak. Everything run by the private sector gets better and cheaper over time -- cellphones, computers, hair products, dishwashers, etc.

You know who specializes in rescuing failing enterprises and making things work? Mitt Romney.

Contrary to ignorant slanders about Romney's private sector work, his specialty was not buying thriving companies and stripping them for parts. Rather, the Bain Capital model was to take companies that were on the verge of collapse -- about to cut all jobs, pensions and health care for their workers -- and save the business.

Yup. Introduce the principle of competition into our government services, and the prices will plummet - as they did when AT&T (initially protected by government) was forced to make room for competitors in the long distance phone service world. Monopoly broken, lower prices benefitting every consumer. If we did the same with health care - granting Medicaid out to states and restructuring Medicare to have more market principles (including private industry protections against fraud) then Medicare costs will drop WITHOUT doctors dropping Medicare patients, or Medicare hospitals closing their doors, unable to cover costs.

If we don't elect Romney, we're stuck with Obamacare forever. This is Ann Coulter's forecast:

If Obamacare is not stopped, it will permanently change the political culture of this country. There will be no going back. America will become a less productive, less wealthy nation. What wealth remains will have to be plowed into Obamacare -- to the delight only of the tens of thousands of government bureaucrats administering it.

There won't be one moment marking the end of America. Everything will just gradually get worse, like trains and the tax code, until a bustling, prosperous nation is as distant a memory as pleasurable train travel and one-page tax returns.

She's right. This illustrates perfectly the choice America faces at this moment. Will we ever again be a beacon of freedom and industry and prosperity? Or will we sink ourselves behind a government leeching more than any of us can afford to sustain programs more expensive than they should be with lower quality than they would have if they were run privately? $16T and counting... There's a reason that government cost analyses are always revised upwards, and that is that the government adds costs through their inefficiency and overhead. Mitt Romney knows how to counter this - he's been doing it his entire career!

No comments:

Post a Comment

For a democracy to be successful and for government to reflect and uphold the will of the people, it is imperative that citizens take their voting responsibility seriously enough to be well informed. The first step is understanding that there is no such thing as fair and balanced coverage anymore, including the polls and fact-checkers. Including both sides in your sources of information is essential to forming an educated opinion. Both sides leave things out. For example, the leftist news media leaves out the good qualities in Republicans, the Tea Party, conservative causes, etc.

Comments are welcome but civility is required, hence the blog owner approval requirement. We need to have a discussion across partisan divides, not a shouting match. No name-calling will be approved for publishing in the comments.